CHAPTER XXIIIONCE AGAIN
ON the Monday morning exactly a week before the August Bank Holiday, Catherine unpacked the morning’s music with a quiet satisfaction that knew no bounds. She was by this time a changed woman. No longer impetuous and hasty, no longer fiery and passionate, no longer a creature of mood and fancy: she was quiet, restrained, dignified almost to the point of arrogance, immensely reliable, and becoming a little shrewd. She had earned the reputation of being an expert saleswoman. There was scarcely a piece of music, or a song, or an orchestral setting which she did not know of: she was a mine of recondite information about violin obligatos and harp accompaniments and so forth. Even Mr. Hobbs, who had hitherto passed as a paragon, acknowledged in her a superior. His mind was merely a memorized and remarkably accurate music catalogue: hers was full of scraps of another world, scraps that raised her above her fellows. Never, even in her greatest days, had her superiority seemed so incontestable as now. Never had she been so quietly proud, so serenely confident that the deference accorded her was no more than her due.
As she untied the string round a bulky parcel of new ballad songs she reflected upon her own unconquerable supremacy. Over in the gramophone department was Amelia, sorting a new consignment of records. Amelia looked as usual, sullen and morose. And it gave Catherine a curious satisfaction to see Amelia looking sullen and morose. Partly, no doubt, because it threw into vivid relief her own superb serenity. But there was another reason. Amelia’s moroseness had a good deal to do withCatherine’s relations with Mr. Hobbs. There had been a time when Mr. Hobbs had seemed to be showing Amelia a significant quantity of his attention. Not so now. To Catherine he gave all the attention he had previously bestowed upon Amelia, coupled with a deference which he had never offered to Amelia at all. Amelia felt herself deposed from a somewhat promising position. But it was not Catherine’s fault.... Catherine never encouraged Mr. Hobbs. She gave him piquant rebuffs and subtle discouragements, and frequent reminders that she was superior to him. She was always distant and unresponsive, and sometimes a little contemptuous. But the more did he return to the assault. Her superb aloofness enchanted him. Her pride, her royal way of taking homage as no more than her due, her splendid self-aplomb convinced him that this was the woman to be Mrs. Hobbs.... So Catherine did not encourage him. It would have been rather silly to do so. And as she saw Amelia looking so sullen and morose, she thought: “Foolish creature! Fancy her thinking that I’m cutting her out! Why, who could help preferring me to her? And I have never encouraged him, I’m quite sure of that ... I’m not a bit to blame....”
On the desk beside her was a single sheet of writing-paper inscribed with the handwriting of Mr. Hobbs. It was his day for visiting publishers, and it was evident to Catherine that he must have gone considerably out of his way to come to the shop and leave this note for her. And to induce Mr. Hobbs to go out of his way was to create a revolution in his entire scheme of existence. Well did Catherine know this, and as she read she smiled triumphantly.
DEAR MISS WESTON,Don’t forget to repeat the order if those songs from Breitkopf and Härtel don’t arrive. I shall be back about three this afternoon.Yrs. sincerely,J. A. HOBBS.
DEAR MISS WESTON,
Don’t forget to repeat the order if those songs from Breitkopf and Härtel don’t arrive. I shall be back about three this afternoon.
Yrs. sincerely,
J. A. HOBBS.
and—
P.S.—Are you free next Saturday afternoon? If so, we could go to Box Hill and Reigate.
P.S.—Are you free next Saturday afternoon? If so, we could go to Box Hill and Reigate.
Catherine, therefore, smiled triumphantly.
There was absolutely no need whatever for him to remind her to repeat the order. That was part of the ordinary routine of her business. He knew she would do that: his reminder had been merely an excuse for something upon which to hang a P.S. Silly man!—Did he imagine such a transparent subterfuge could deceive her?
She did not particularly like him. He was not more to her than any other man. But she liked him to like her. She liked the sensation of entering the settled calm and ordered routine of his existence and exploding there like a stick of dynamite. He had faults. He was too careful with his money, too prone to give money a higher place than it deserved. And his mind, when he strove to divert it into philosophical channels, was woefully sterile. But he so obviously reverenced her. With a quiet dignity he demanded to be treated as an inferior. There was no resisting such an appeal. Whether she liked him or not she could not help liking the immense compliment he paid her by his whole attitude.... It was not that he had not a high opinion of himself. He had, and that enhanced the significance of the fact that his opinion of her was higher still....
Next Saturday afternoon? ... Yes, no doubt she would be free next Saturday afternoon....
As the morning progressed she transacted her business steadily and methodically. About three in the afternoon Mr. Hobbs returned. She was careful to show no eagerness to see him, careful that she should not betray by her countenance or manner her reply to his invitation. He, on his part, was quite ready to fall in with her pretence. He attended to various matters in the gramophone department and left her very much to herself. When he spoke to her it was strictly on business, and with a frigid professional politeness.
At a few minutes past four he called her to the telephone. A gentleman wanted a piece of music, and he did not know what exactly it was orwhere it could be obtained. Perhaps Miss Weston would oblige....
Catherine went to the instrument.
It tickled her vanity to be appealed to as a last resource. She tossed her head a little proudly as she put her ear to the receiver.
A strange thing happened....
Someone was speaking down the instrument, and at the sound of his voice Catherine flushed a deep red. A wave of recognition and recollection and remembrance swept over and engulfed her. She did not hear what he said.
“Again, please,” she muttered huskily, in a tone not in the least like her usual, “I didn’t quite catch....”
The voice boomed in rather irritated repetition,
“Bach double-piano concerto,” it said, “in C minor.... Bach ... for two pianos ... do you understand?”
She tried to grasp it while her mind was busied with a million other things.
“It goes like this ...” the voice went on, and commenced a weird nasal rumble like a tube-train emerging from a tunnel.... “Da-da-da-da-da-daddaddadd-addadd-addah.”
She smiled! Once again fate had flung to her a moment of triumph. Long ago, when the man at the other end of the telephone had been her friend, she had learnt specially for him a work of Bach which was little known and not likely to be much cared about. Her gift had never been offered.... And now, after all this interval, he was enquiring about the very piece she had learned for him!
She put the telephone apparatus on the top of the piano on which she tried things over. Then sitting down she played over the first few bars of the concerto.... Keeping the receiver to her ear she heard:
“That’s it!—That’s the one!—Do you know it?—Curious—well, well, get it for me, will you.... Good!—I’ve tried all over town for it....”
“What address?” she enquired mechanically.
The voice replied: “Professor Verreker ... Seahill ... Barhanger, Essex.”
As she walked back to the counter Mr. Hobbs said: “Did you know what the gentleman wanted?”
“Yes,” she replied fiercely, triumphantly, contemptuously. He stared at her. He did not know that a change had passed swiftly over her. He did not know that the sound of a man’s voice spoken over fifty miles had swept her out of the calm seas into the wind and rain and storm. He did not know that once again she was in deep and troubled waters, fighting for life and a sure footing. He thought his invitation had offended her. He made haste to apologize.
“I hope,” he began, “you didn’t mind me asking you to Box——”
“I’m afraid,” she replied impatiently, “I can’t come ... I’ve ... I’ve another engagement....”
And he went away into the gramophone department....
The knowledge that Verreker was in England, within approachable distance of her, gave her a strange, complicated mixture of pleasure and annoyance. Deep down in her heart she knew that to see him again would be as a breath of life after ages of dim existence. Yet she was annoyed, because she had grown to be satisfied with the dull, drab routine of her days: she had built up a new, and on the whole satisfactory scheme of existence on the supposition that she should never see him again. She did not want to see him again. She did not want to have anything to do with him. And yet she knew that some day either circumstances or her own initiative would bring her face to face with him once more.... She knew that his place in her life had not achieved finality, that there was more to say and to hear, and great decisions to be made.
Secretly she knew that some day, when the impulse seized her, she would go to visit him at Barhanger. But with amazing credulity she told herself: Of course I shall never go to see him. If he cares to ask me I will come. But he must take the initiative, not I.... But she began to picture their meeting. She began to conjure up images of Seahilland the Essex countryside and he and she walking and talking amidst a background of her own imagining. Just as in the old days she had invented an “ideal” conversation to be pursued at any surprise meeting with her father, so now she concocted a special dialogue between herself and Verreker, which, if he should only play the part allotted to him, would reveal her in an attractive and mysterious light. Of course he would not do so: of that she was quite certain, yet the manufacture of ideal rôles for him and herself gave her a good deal of restricted pleasure. She must at this time have decided definitely to go and see him, otherwise there could have been no inducement for her to dream dreams. But she still told herself that she would not see him till he had seen her.... One evening she visited the reference department of the Bockley Carnegie library and consulted a map of Essex. Barhanger was almost on the sea-coast; five miles from the nearest railway station, overlooking one of the great tidal estuaries of the Essex rivers. And Barhanger Creek reached right up to the village of Barhanger.... She had not thought it was so near the sea. She had pictured an inland village with a village green and thatched cottages and perhaps a single-line railway station. Now she had to dream her dreams over again in a different setting, and into this new setting came the creek and the broad estuary and the shining sea, all magnificently idealized, all transfigured by the presence of herself and Verreker....
It was curious how the thought of him awoke in her old dreams and aspirations. She began once more to revile her own soul for its selfishness and avarice: she began to wish for her old pianoforte prowess and such education as she had once managed to cram into that head of hers. Yet against her will was all this change and flurry: she was always protesting, I am better as I am. I want to be quiet and respectable. I don’t want to see him or to know him, because he has unlimited power to make me unhappy....
Her superb serenity left her. She became once more a foolish, unreliable creature of fierce trivialities. She no longer took any interest in the affairs of Amelia and her mother and Mr. Hobbs. Shebegan to think rather acutely of Helen, though. How would Helen come into the matter? Would Helen be jealous of her interference? ... And did he love Helen? Or was it only a marriage of convenience? All those things she would never find out unless she visited him. Though, of course, she would not visit him without an invitation. That was quite decided.
On the Saturday morning before the August Bank Holiday Mr. Hobbs left a note for her on her desk. She slipped it in her hand-bag without opening it.... She was concerned with other things. And when she got home on Saturday afternoon she discovered on her table a card left by the Rev. Elkin Broodbank, of St. Luke’s Vicarage, Bockley. This also she dropped unceremoniously into her hand-bag.... She was concerned with other things.... She next took up an A.B.C. railway guide, and searched it carefully for some minutes. Then she shut it with a bang and went to her bedroom to decorate herself. She was not so charming as she once had been, and so the process of decoration became a longer one. Her hair—the thing of her she most prized—had begun to be dull and lack-lustre: the eyes, too, had lost vivacity. She was no longer a young woman.... Oh, the horror of growing old, when youth has taken charm away! ... But she was concerned with other things. She scribbled a note to Mrs. Lazenby and left it on the kitchen table. Then she walked discreetly down the steps into Cubitt Lane, and by way of Makepeace Common to Bockley Station....